Unlike George and Martha in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, all American university campuses know the truth about big-time athletics. They know precisely the difference between truth and illusion.

They have no illusions that big-time athletes are students. Watch the parade of prevaricators at the University of North Carolina who are shocked – shocked! – to find that academic fraud is going on there. We know they’re lying; they know they’re lying. It’s all very strange.

Yet on it goes. As his school goes the way of virtually all big-time sports schools, a University of Michigan regent offers an if/then:

If [academics and big-time athletics] can’t coexist, then intercollegiate athletics is truly an illusion.”

Yes, if and only if… Because… uh… We haven’t settled the question! Not enough data. Votes aren’t yet all counted.

But while you’re counting them, don’t forget that where academic fraud is concerned, Michigan’s tally is below Chapel Hill:

[In 2008,] Prof. John Hagen … was accused of assisting student-athletes in maintaining eligibility by teaching independent study courses that were well below University standards of academic rigor. In Hagen’s courses, the student-athletes had an average GPA of 3.62, whereas their average in other classes was a 2.57. Some students were found to have spent only 15 minutes with Hagen every two weeks, but earned up to four credits for the class. Hagen taught 294 independent studies courses from Fall 2004 to Fall 2007, 251 of which were to student-athletes. After months of investigation, the allegations were dropped…

Dropped! Dropped! Even Chapel Hill couldn’t find a way to drop them.

Truth or illusion. These people feel compelled to carry on as though we’re too stupid to see the difference. They of course see the difference all too clearly. They just don’t give a shit.